A

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Album: Us (Album Review)
Song: Tight Rope
Video from Vimeo.
Wikipedia Bio: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brother_Ali

Verse 1:

Frigid frozen Minnesota
Chip on his shoulder
Sick sleeping on a pissy sofa
Unwanted visitor in a different culture
Missing home and he can’t go their civil waring
Listen solider forget getting over
Prison state around the corner homless is even closer
Kids with similar skin color still don’t even wantcha
Spit and insult ya cause they have been here longer
He leave his crib he guaranteed the pigs approach ya
Where ya going where ya from any weapons on ya?
Your family is stressed out your getting older
You don’t live the way they did back in Somalia
It’s extra difficult to be a daughter
Trying to keep it modest with sinners all around you
Where the wrong garment your parents get an ulcer
If you wrap it up the other children picking on you

Chorus:

Live in two worlds with your eyes closed
Tip toeing on a tight rope
Holding on for survival
Nobody to blame this is just how it goes

Verse 2:

Holidays and you know what the business is
You get two birthdays and two Christmases
Older you get you resent how sick it is
They’re trying to cover their guilt with the gifts they give
Bounce from his house to her house
Too bad that marriage didn’t work out
Now you don’t have a your house
Daddy fighting mommy they both tell me they love me
If I get to close to one the other one start acting funny
Ma went and had a baby with a different dad
You act happy to please em but you are really sad
Seeing first hand that family that you will never have
Plus you ain’t no real brother, you’re just a half
Got to pick up the pieces and move on
Bed time stories and greet them on the phone
Live in two houses and neither one is home
Wishing you were grown have the freedom to get gone

Chorus x2

Verse 3:

Daddy was a preacher, momma was a Sunday school teacher
Big brother, football squad leader
Now far be it for you to disappoint or displease them
Your just being what you feel you see in
That mirror every time you peer in
Swallow the tears inside that empty feeling
Her boy terrified to let the world in
He has girlfriends but doesn’t want a girlfriend
He retreats inside himself
Where he lives life itself in secret
Daddy says people go to hell for being
What he is and he certainly believes them
Cause there ain’t no flame that can blaze enough
To trump being hated for the way you love
And cry yourself to sleep and hate waking up
It’s a cold world y’all shame on us

Chorus x2

A

Why aren’t we all Good Samaritans? Daniel Goleman on TED.com

Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence, asks why we aren’t more compassionate more of the time. Through psychological experiments and a story of the Santa Cruz Strangler, he shows how we are all born with the capacity for empathy — but we sometimes choose to ignore it. (Recorded March 2007 in Monterey, California. Duration: 13:13.)

(source: http://blog.ted.com/2007/12/18/daniel_goleman/ )

 

 

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Won’t You Be My Neighbor

(from: http://www.chadestes.com/2010/08/won%E2%80%99t-you-be-my-neighbor )

A religious scholar asked Jesus a question, to test his adherence to the law. “Teacher, what do I need to do to ensure I will live forever?”

Jesus answered his question with a question, “How do you interpret the scriptures?”

The scholar, taken back that now he was on the hot seat, took a moment before answering, “That you love the Lord your God with all your passion, that you pray, that you serve God with your whole life—and that you love your neighbor as much as you do yourself.”

“Great answer!” said Jesus. “Do it and you will live.”

Not satisfied, and still looking for an argument, the scholar asked, “Well then, how would you define ‘neighbor’?”

Jesus answered by launching into a story.

“There was once a man traveling to New York City to visit the site where his brother was killed in a terrorist attack. He was looking for a way to deal with his emotions and find some healing. As he walked to the memorial he was accosted by a Christian man who assumed he was a Muslim because of the taqiyah on his head. “You have no right to be here!” he yelled at him.

The man stuttered in broken English, “I’ve come to pay my respects and pray.”

“If you had any common sense you would know you aren’t welcome here, just like we aren’t welcome in your country!”

The sojourner walked on, head bowed. He hoped the next person he met would be more receptive to his visit. It wasn’t the case. As the Jewish Rabbi saw him coming down the street he jay-walked to the other side so he wouldn’t come face to face with the Arab man.

He rounded the corner, coming closer to the memorial, and was very nearly in tears. He surprisingly found himself at the door of a mosque. He went in and found the Imam who listened to his story. He confessed to the Imam that it was one of his brothers who had become a terrorist and had hijacked one of the airplanes that crashed into the towers. Though some in his religion thought he should be proud of his brother’s ‘sacrifice’, in his heart, he felt only shame. The Imam led him in prayers and then walked him to the site where he could mourn the loss of his brother along with the men and women who perished in the towers. He then took the traveler back to the mosque and talked to him of living a life of radical peace and prepared to send him home.”

 

Jesus then asked the religious scholar, “Whose actions towards this stranger were the more God-like? Which man would you truly want as your neighbor?”

The scholar kicked at the dirt, not wanting to answer. He was more than a little offended. “The Muslim Imam,” he mumbled under his breath.

Jesus last words to him were, “Then maybe you should try living like him.”

 

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The Parable of the Good Nigger*
(Adapted from The Cotton Patch Gospel)

(from: http://www.mindspring.com/~skazmarek/mind/05Parab.htm )

[Scene: Gainesville, Georgia, in the mid-1950's. Southern-style racial injustice is in full bloom. Jesus is preaching to a group that ranges from businessmen on their lunch break to prostitutes, derelicts, white trash, and Negroes. Some of the local sheriffs and ministers have gathered to see if they can make Jesus look bad, maybe even catch him "inciting a riot" so they can throw him in jail.]

One of the ministers said, “Preacher, tell us again what we have to do to go to heaven.” Jesus replied, “You’re a minister. What do you say?”

The minister immediately went on autopilot: “The Good Book makes that perfectly clear: ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and love thy neighbor as thyself.’” Said Jesus: “You have correctly stated what God requires of you, sir; do that and I assure you that you will go to heaven.”

“And,” said the minister, with mock sincerity, “exactly who is my neighbor?”

“Let me tell you a story,” said Jesus. “Once there was a traveling salesman. One day, when he was headed for Dalton, he was jumped by a gang of thugs. They beat him half-way to death, took his money and car, and left him to die along the side of the road. Soon, a prominent businessman drove up, realized that he had stumbled along the scene of a crime, got real scared, and sped away. Then a minister came by, pushed the unconscious salesman with his foot, muttered something about ‘this sinful world,’ and he drove away too. Later on, an old Negro man, a junk collector, came by. He listened for the salesman’s breath, realized he was still alive, and put him in his truck to drive him back to Gainesville. At the first hotel, he got the man a room, stayed with him for a day, and shared his food with him. He paid the hotel clerk all the money he had, and promised to come back after he sold his junk to take care of any extra charges.”

“Now, you tell me,” said Jesus, “which one was that man’s neighbor?” There was a palpable silence in the air as Jesus and the minister stared at each other.

“I guess it was that nigger,” the minister reluctantly acknowledged.

“Then,” Jesus replied, “why don’t you go, and act the way you know you should.”

 

* The word “nigger” used above is, obviously, a hateful term that has been properly banished from the English language. It is used here, though, as you will see from reading the parable, because when Jesus told the parable of the “good Samaritan,” the Samaritans were a despised racial minority and the word “Samaritan” was the same kind of slur as the word “nigger.”

 

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The Good Fag:

(slightly adapted from http://goldenhealerfantasy.forumotion.net/t109-a-modern-retelling-of-the-good-samaritan )

Jesus said, “A certain single mother was going down from East St. Louis to Belleville; and she fell to a pre-existing condition and the high cost of health care, and insurance companies stripped her and denied her treatment and went off leaving her half dead.

“And by chance a certain pastor of a fundamentalist baptist church was going down on the road, and when he saw her, he passed by on the other side.

“And likewise a member of the congregation also, when he came to the place and saw her, passed by on the other side.

“But then a fag, who was on a journey, came upon her, and when he saw her, he felt compassion, and came to her, and acquired for her proper medication, pouring sunshine and rainbows on her, and he put her in his own car, and brought her to a clinic, and took care of her.

“And on the next day he took out two hundred dollars and gave them to the doctor and said, ‘Take care of her, and whatever more you spend, when I return, I will repay you.’

“Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the mother who fell to the greed of insurance companies and fear-mongering of religious conservatives?”

And the Muslim he was teaching said, “The one who showed mercy toward her. Praise Allah.” And Jesus said to him, “Go and do the same.”

 

 

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Average Joe:

A  lawyer walks downtown to go to court and sees on her right a man, who had been robbed, stripped, and beaten.  But she was on her way to court, needing to review her case before the trial so she hurried on by.  The same day a young priest, who had had a busy day and was running late to morning mass, came across the same man, beaten, stripped, and robbed.  Nevertheless, the priest was still young and had not shown the fathers of the church that he was responsible enough to lead the morning mass; so he felt regret but kept walking, making it just in time.

About twenty minutes later a religious education director walked down the street, seeing the broken man who was lying on the ground.  The religious education director crossed to the other side of the street (out of sight out of mind).  Then came a secular humanist and saw the man that had been robbed, stripped, and beaten.  The secular humanist helped the broken man up and carried him to the nearest motel, got a room and tried to clean and bandage his wounds.

After the secular humanist had done this as well as possible under the circumstances, the secular humanist went to the innkeeper and asked if she would take care of the wounded man.  The innkeeper said that she would and the secular humanist left after promising to return and repay her for all that she had done, although the secular humanist was not wealthy, having just enough to get by.

B
http://www.ministrymatters.com/all/article/entry/1005/the-logic-of-hell

When I’ve suggested in the past that there might be Hindus in heaven, some of my conservative friends have found the idea unsettling. In what follows I’d like to approach a notion that might be equally unsettling to some of my liberal friends: the idea of hell and the reality that some people are destined to go there.
 
Hell seems, to many people, to be one of those doctrines that is inconsistent with the idea of a loving and merciful God. There are at least three dimensions of hell many find disturbing. First, we are disturbed by the idea of good people being sent to hell. We can find the idea of hell more acceptable when we think of evil people who abuse, rape, and murder. But thinking of hell as a place where a loving grandfather, or a mother of small children, or a best friend might be sent simply because they did not understand or believe the gospel when it was presented? Many find this idea upsetting.
 
Second, we are disturbed by the idea of hell as torture and punishment for its inhabitants. We can relate to punishment— we’ve all been disciplined for doing the wrong thing. But as parents, when we discipline our children, it is redemptive; that is, the intention is to teach them something and to shape their character. But even here we try to make sure that the punishment fits the crime. We would not torture our children for doing wrong. But the idea of the kind of punishment usually associated with hell— torment in a furnace of fire “where the worm dies not” (Mark 9:47-48, paraphrased), “where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 13:42)—is unsettling. Would the God whose nature is love create a place where people would be tortured by fire, or worse? Can we attribute to God the creation of a prison whose cruelty exceeds that of any prisons run by contemporary diabolical dictators?
 
Finally, the question is not simply who populates hell, nor the kind of torment that is experienced there, but the duration of the sentence to hell; namely, that hell is eternal punishment for those who have been sent there. Such a punishment is disproportionate to the crime—an eternity of suffering for eighty or ninety years of sin? Would God subject a soul to eternal torture for failing to respond to his offer of grace in this temporal life?
 
My aim here is not to offer a comprehensive statement, but to describe a few ideas that shape my own view of hell—ideas that may either be helpful to you, or at least serve as a basis for clarifying your own views.
 
I reject the literalistic perspectives of some conservatives concerning hell, and the dismissive and overly optimistic view of some liberals, but I would suggest a third way to think about hell and invite you to consider it in the light of scripture, tradition, experience, and reason. I reject the idea that there is no such place or state as hell. Jesus speaks with some regularity about judgment and a place of “outer darkness.” He embodies this judgment when, in anger, he casts the moneychangers from the temple. I can picture his jaw clenched and the look in his eyes as he describes those dismissed from the Son of Man’s presence at the Last Judgment for seeing the hungry, thirsty, and naked and doing nothing to help. I cannot ignore this idea of judgment if I am to take Jesus seriously.
 
At the same time I recognize that Jesus speaks in metaphors and similes and uses hyperbole frequently in order to make his point. We must take Jesus’ comments about the judgment and a negative afterlife seriously, but I don’t believe we must take them literally, just as I don’t think we take literally his command to cut off our hand or pluck out our eyes if they cause us to sin. These directives from Jesus are meant to be taken seriously, but not literally.
 
As an aside, I have heard a handful of people over the years describe near-death experiences that were not of the pleasant variety— near-death experiences that literally “scared the hell out” of them. One such man, an atheist before the experience, and now a United Church of Christ pastor, described his near death experience this way:
 
“I always believed you died, and after that nothing—a kind of darkness—but now I was in that darkness, beyond life, and it was hell. . . . I was left alone to become a creature of the dark. . . . I desperately needed someone to love me, someone to know I was alive.” He notes that at that moment the words and tune to a song he had learned when he was a small child began to enter his thoughts: “Jesus loves me, this I know.” He continues that, as he began to sing this song, “for the first time in my adult life I wanted it to be true that Jesus loved me. I didn’t know how to express what I wanted and needed, but with every bit of my last ounce of strength I yelled out into the darkness ‘Jesus save me’ . . . far off in the distance, I saw a pinpoint of light.” Shortly after this the doctors resuscitated him. His experience of a place of utter darkness seems consistent with some of the biblical descriptions of hell.
 
I want to say a word to those who may be a bit more conservative, and who believe that there are many who are going to hell. I would encourage you to take the time to study what Jesus says about who is going to hell. Those who are going to hell, according to Jesus are those who call their neighbor a “fool” (Matthew 5:22b); those who lust after women in their hearts (Matthew 5:27-30); religious leaders who are hypocritical (Matthew 23:1-36); those who are not good stewards of the gifts God has given them (Matthew 25:14-30); and religious people who refuse to help those in need (Matthew 25:31-46). Nothing is said in these passages about people of other religions, or even lost people; most of what Jesus says about hell seems reserved for those who are religious. Most of us have said to another “You fool!” Most of us have lusted after others in our hearts. We’ve all acted with hypocrisy. And none of us have done as much as we should have to help those in need.
 
I think Jesus uses hell as a way of warning us to take our sin seriously, just as I warned my daughters when they were teenagers that they would be grounded for the “rest of your lives” if they lied to me, or they would lose their right to drive for “months” if I caught them driving without their seatbelt, or I would refuse to pay for a cent of their college if they got any kind of extraneous piercing or tattoo while they were still on my “payroll.” I meant for them to take me very seriously when I said these things, but ultimately my mercy prevailed and the judgment, though meted out, was typically of a briefer duration than the threat. The threat is like saying, “This is the maximum penalty by law,” but I reserved the right to lower the penalty.
 
Yet I believe in hell. I do so not simply because Jesus talked about it, but because it seems to me to be a necessary and logical corollary to heaven. Jesus tells us that we are to pray “thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” This tells us something about heaven—it tells us that in heaven God’s will is done. If heaven is that place where God’s reign is complete, where God’s will is always done, where people no longer hate, kill, steal, mistreat, go to war, or inflict pain on others, then those who enter must either have their freedom removed, or they agree to submit to God’s reign and will.
 
But what if someone is unwilling to live according to God’s will? Would that person be forced to dwell in the heavenly kingdom? I don’t think so. Such an existence would be a hell for them, and heaven would no longer be a place where God’s will is done. Hell, it seems to me, is the place for all of those who do not wish to live according to God’s will and submit their lives to God’s reign. God wishes all to join him and to live as his children and his subjects. He is a good King, a benevolent King, and a loving King. But he will not force persons to be his subjects. He beckons them to choose, and to willingly follow him. If one does not wish to do this, there is a place, a kind of dark kingdom, reserved for all who wish to do things their own way.
 
Let’s consider what this hell must be like. If it is populated by those who wish not to live according to the will of God, then it is filled with those who wish to do things their own way. It is filled with people who believe the world revolves around them. It is filled with people who are always “looking out for number one”; countless narcissistic souls who are taking advantage of other narcissistic souls in order to meet their own needs—people feeding on one another until there is nothing left to feed on. Hell would be a place where most goodness has been removed, where the restraints that come from people following God have been removed, and where the light of God’s presence may be dim, or absent altogether. Dante may not have been far off in describing one scene from hell where one resident is gnawing on the flesh of another. In essence, this may be a powerful picture of hell—a place filled with the self-absorbed, absent of nearly all goodness, darkened as we would expect by the desire to be as far away from God’s reign as possible.
 
What’s important to note in this concept is that hell is a nightmare, and the nightmare is not the result of something God has created, but the result of the exercise of freedom on the part of inhabitants who have chosen to reject God’s rule and reign.
 
Not long ago a woman who had escaped the Congo shared her story with the staff of our church. The horrors she described in her country gave me a picture of what hell must be like. She spoke of homes destroyed, property confiscated, brutal murders, cannibalism, and of her own rape and the rape of her children. She showed photos so gruesome that, after I wrote a description of them here I decided to take it out—it is simply too disturbing. These events are happening now, today, by men who are utterly depraved and who have the ability to do whatever they wish wherever they wish. Do we really believe such men would submit to the rule of God and enter the kingdom of heaven? This is my picture of the inhabitants of hell ever seeking to do whatever they wish to one another. This is utter darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.
 
I have one last thought about hell, and perhaps heaven, for that matter. Is it possible that those in heaven might choose to rebel against God’s rule at some time in the future? Many Christian theologians suggest that once we are in heaven, we find it impossible to sin. Perhaps, but is it possible, even in heaven, that we might rebel, and that God might let us go to the place reserved for those who rebel against him? And, likewise, I wonder if it is possible that some in hell could choose to leave hell and yield or submit to God’s will?
 
What if hell itself is aimed at working out God’s redemptive purposes? What if the aim of hell is not only punishment or discipline, nor even simply God’s provision of a place for those who wish to live outside of his will? What if God’s hope is that those in hell will finally come to understand the darkness of living for self and in rebellion to God, so that they will cry out, even from hell, “Lord Jesus, be merciful to me a sinner”? C. S. Lewis seems to suggest this view in his wonderful little book The Great Divorce. In it he notes that the doors of hell are “locked from the inside.” The story tells of a busload of people in hell who journey to heaven and are given the opportunity to yield and stay in heaven, but one by one they choose to return to hell rather than live in the light of God’s will. Lewis notes, “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’”
 
May we be those who say to him, daily, “Thy will be done.”
 
Excerpted from Adam Hamilton’s Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White: Thoughts of Religion, Morality, and Politics, Copyright © 2008 by Abingdon Press. Adam is the Senior Pastor of the 16,000 member Church of the Resurrection in suburban Kansas City.